French criminal procedure () focuses on how individuals accused of crimes are dealt with in the French criminal justice system: how people are investigated, prosecuted, tried, and punished for an infraction defined in the penal code. These procedural issues are codified in the French code of criminal procedure (). It is the procedural arm of French criminal law.
French criminal procedure has roots in customary law under the Ancien regime under Louis XIV, and was first codified with the (). This was replaced in 1959 with the Code of criminal procedure (; CPP).
The main groups involved in the administration of criminal justice in France are the courts, the Public Ministry (France), and the judicial police. Criminal courts are structured in three levels, with the Police court and the Correctional court in the first instance; appeals are held by the Cour d'appel and the Cour de Cassation.
Courts involved include the police court and the correctional court at the first level or instance, and the Cour d'Appel and Cour de Cassation at the second and third instance. Traditionally, the legal system for administering criminal justice in France has been and continues to be the inquisitorial system, but more and more, aspects of the adversarial system, such as plea bargaining, has been included as well.
The typical stages of criminal procedure include: reporting an offense, police investigation, prosecution, judicial investigation, trial, and sentencing. During the investigation phase, various powers are available to assit, such as: (remand in custody); arrest, search, and others, all laid out in specific sections of the code.
Terminology
Two meanings
In France, the term criminal procedure () has two meanings; a narrow one, referring to the process that happens during a criminal case as it proceeds through the phases of receiving and investigating a complaint, arresting suspects, and bringing them to trial, resulting in possible sentencing—and a broader meaning referring to the way the justice system is organized into the actors and institutions involved, chiefly the police, the prosecutors, the Public Ministry, the courts and judges, and their roles and interactions.
Criminal law and criminal procedure
Criminal law () deals with an individual's rights and obligations under the law, as codified in a penal code. Under French criminal law, the penal code (CP) defines what acts (or omissions) are punishable. Criminal procedure focuses on how individuals accused of crimes are dealt with in the criminal justice system: how people are investigated, prosecuted, tried, and punished. In France, these procedural issues are codified in the Code of criminal procedure ().
Codification
Sources
The sources of criminal procedure are different than the sources of civil law. The domain of criminal procedure is the loi (lit., "law", or "statutes"), in contradistinction to civil law, which are (regulations). Practically speaking, the main difference is that the Constitution specifies in article 34 that criminal procedure is part of the , and thus may not be handled by but reserved to acts of Parliament, thus demonstrating the privileged status of criminal procedure within the French legal system, compared to civil law.
History
French criminal procedure has roots in customary law under the Ancien regime under Louis XIV. The Criminal Ordinance of 1670 dealt with the jurisdiction of the national police force the Maréchaussée.
Major developments included laws passed around the time of the French Revolution in 1791 and 1801, the (), and two years later, the Penal code of 1810. The 1897 law on Criminal defense followed.
Modern criminal procedure was developed at the end of the Fourth Republic, and codified with the promulgation of the provisional title and volume I of the new code in December 1957, which came into force in 1958 and in 1959 with the Code of criminal procedure ().
Organization
The main groups involved in the administration of criminal justice in France are the courts, the Public Ministry, and the judicial police.
Criminal courts
Criminal courts in France are one of two kinds of "ordinary courts" (ordre judiciaire), which handle both criminal and civil litigation.
At the bottom of the hierarchy of ordinary courts are the courts of minor jurisdiction, which, on the criminal law side, may sit as police courts () to hear summary offenses (such as traffic violations, limited assault, breach of peace). (A particularity of the French judiciary is that the same court may also sit as a civil court () on other occasions to hear minor civil cases.)